Needs Assessment

Assignment 2: Needs Assessment

Instructions: Read the material at the sites listed in the Week 2 Lessons folder to help guide you in understanding needs with relation to your management problem. Complete a 2-4 page paper discussing the client’s needs with relation to the management problem you are studying.

Read the material at the following websites:

http://www.discoverer.com/D6.html

http://nwlink.com/~donclark/analysisanalysis.html

http://nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat2.html#analysis

http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rouda/T2_NA.html

Optional:  Watch the video lecture (approx. 40 minutes)

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/vftt_thiry.html

Conduct Needs Assessment

Now that you have identified a client and the management problem you will investigate, you will conduct a needs assessment.  When conducting a needs assessment you first identify the “what is” relating to the problem you have chosen to address and contrast that to “what should be.”

Some questions you can explore to help you are:

•    What is the problem?

•    How does the desired performance relate to the mission statement?

•    Is the problem organization-wide or isolated to one or a few individuals?

•    Have organizational initiatives created the problem?

•    Does the problem relate to individual performance issues?

•    Is training adequate to support the desired outcome?

•    Is the issue related to job design?

•    What criteria are used to measure performance?

•    Is performance criteria appropriate, i.e. attainable and measurable?

These questions do not all need to be answered nor is this list all inclusive; they are provided to help you get started and inspire your own questions to explore while completing this assignment.

Keep in mind:  Once one has identified a problem, the next focus it to look at the needs assessment.  During this phase one would identify what is the situation in relation to the problem.  In the example of from Week 1, the manager has eight productive employees and two employees with productivity problems that, in turn, creates an overall productivity problem for the department.  This week we want to look at what should be.  Using our example, the answer would be that all ten employees need to be performing at an acceptable productivity level so the department is performing at an acceptable productivity level.  You are not identifying HOW to solve the problem during this phase…only asking yourself where you are and where you need to be.

NOTE:  Research is required for this an all of the papers in this class.  You must have a minimum of two sources each week, neither of which can be Wikepedia.